Blood River Down - Book I of the Quest of the White Duck

By: Charles L. Grant, Lionel Fenn

Narrated by: Jack Chekijian

Gideon Sunday, an ex-semi-professional American Football player, goes to his pantry to retrieve an awful bottle of his (dead) sister's fruit preserves. When he gets there, he discovers a meadow in his pantry. He closes the door, takes a few breaths, and begins to investigate with as much sanity and candor as Sherlock Holmes. Upon discovering that A) no one is playing a trick on him, B) there really IS a meadow in his cupboard, and C) there is something three-quarters of ugly coming out of it, he decides to beat a monster to death with a baseball bat.

Upon his conquest, he meets the lovely, and helpless, and possibly stupid Glorian, who tells him that she has come to get him so that he can fulfill a quest. Gideon, you see, must find a white duck and bring it to a certain river and put its down on the river to keep the land from being flooded. No one has really seen the duck, no one knows what is so special about the duck, no one knows where the duck is (supposedly). Glorian just knows that Gideon has to get it. Why Gideon? Because that is where her magic portal took her.

Along with a bellicose young man, a retired weapons trader and master, a dashing and dangerous young lady, and a large, peaceful goat (and a band of singing thieves, like Robin Hood, except with song), Gideon has to break in to the most heavily guarded fortress in the world to rescue Glorian, steal a duck, and save the world.

Yes. It's that awesome.

©1987 Charles L. Grant's Estate - Kathryn Ptacek (P)2012 David N. Wilson

A quest with humor ... and a white duck!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. If you're looking for non-stop action, edge-of-your-seat suspense, or a complicated mystery, this is definitely not the book for you, but it does have its own special charm. It's a book about a guy, Gideon Sunday, who is pretty down on his luck and knows it, but isn't really sure what to do about it. Then a very strange world opens up in his pantry ... yep, right there off the kitchen. He kills a monster and then accepts a challenge to help a lovely young lady from that world, and so begins his quest. The reader, Jack Checkijian, has a comfortable story-telling tone and does an excellent job of conveying both Gideon's faint bewilderment with his situation and his dry humor when things go wrong, as they inevitably do. Because, though his partners in the quest don't really want to tell him anything about it - ever! - he does eventually find out that he is on a quest for a duck ... a white duck. The reason for the quest, and the significance of the duck, only become clear near the end of the book, and Gideon's lack of understanding contributes to some priceless moments of humor. I thought this book was great low-key entertainment. Because really, who could resist a quest for a white duck???

A low key, tongue-in-cheek fantasy

This is a reprint of a book written in 1986 by prolific award-winning author Charles L. Grant under the pen name of Lionel Fenn. Not horror. Not rapid action. A simple fantasy tale with quiet humor suitable for any age.
Narrator Jack gives a fine voice performance with narrative and character interpretation in clear voice and enunciation.
This book was received as a gift

Quest of the White Duck 1

This was a fun read.Jack Chekijian is a great narrator for this book.
Gideon is an ex football player waiting by the phone for a new opportunity,drinking himself into the ground.He walks into his pantry to see a meadow,a woman and a beast come out of it.As he is sucked in to the other world he learns that he is in for a Quest for a White Duck. It's not any white duck,it's THE white duck. He meets odd people and animals on his journey and finds a long lost loved one...kind of.
This audiobook was provided to me at no cost for a fair and honest review

full of imaginative details and jokes

Gideon Sunday, an in between jobs professional football player, one day discovers that the back wall of his pantry has disappeared, and that it now leads to another place. Glorian has come from this new place and asks Gideon for help to try to find a white duck.

This is one of those fantasy books pretending to be humorous by using of absurd scenes. It did not quite work for me this time, in part because the characters were plain and one-dimensional, which prevented me to connect to them, and because the situations and conversations were not really funny. If at least I could see some depth I could have enjoyed the jokes and puns, but the characters were very caricaturesque and their speech was absurd most of the time.

The story is slowly paced and there is a lot of deus ex machina. New characters are introduced with new situations, but the way it is done is quite chaotic and it gives a disjointed feel to the book.

This is one of those books where the way has more importance than the goal itself, and neither Gideon nor us know what is at stake in the search for the duck. This made the quest a bit pointless, but I understand that Grant wanted us to focus on the little things along the way. I just wish that his humor would have worked better with me. I found most of the things not funny at all.

The narration was correctly done but the characters voices just emphasized the fact that they seem dumb and just mere caricatures. The female voices were especially annoying. I understand that some male narrators could have some difficulties with this, but other seem to be able to pull it off. Why Jack Chekijian decided to have them sound plain and dumb, I do not know. Maybe the jokes did not work for me because this was overdone.

All in all, it is not a bad book. It is full of imaginative details and jokes that could have worked if they did not overload the book and the character voices were done in a bit subtler way.

Audiobook was provided for review by the narrator.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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Misleading description! Book was mild, and good for sleeping

From the description I expected this to be a wacky adventure, or a satirical parody of fantasy tropes. I imagined a cross between “ The lion the witch and the wardrobe,” and “hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy,”. Instead I got blah!
Blah characters,
Blah descriptions of the world,
And Blah plot!
I found out this book was originally published in the 1980s, so maybe it was more cutting edge then?
The humor is so subtle I did not even recognise the jokes until about halfway through the book.
It’s not bad, it just didn’t live up to my expectations.
The one really good feature is the narrator! He includes lots of Subtle voices to make the boring charecters more interesting.

Dry As Dust

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

An interesting plot and characters? It's told from one character's point of view, and that character is BORING.

Would you ever listen to anything by Charles L. Grant and Lionel Fenn again?

Nope.

What three words best describe Jack Chekijian’s performance?

Somewhat amusing.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Not really.